Featuring Women's History, Women Authors, Writing In General, And Author Interviews. Home of the Teresa Thomas Bohannon author of the Historical, Paranormal Romance, Shadows In A Timeless Myth, the Regency Romance Novel, A Very Merry Chase, and the illustrated version of Jane Austen's posthumously published Juvenilia, The Widow's Tale.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents True stories of Heroic Women During WWI

STORIES OF HEROIC WOMEN IN
THE GREAT WAR

Tales of Feminine Deeds of Daring

Thousands of stories from the battlefields tell of the heroism
of the women of France, Russia, England, Italy—and all the
countries involved in the war—women fighting as soldiers in
every army; women who act as spies; women who risk their
lives on dangerous missions. A few of these stories are told in
these pages. The first three are from the New York World,
and the fourth from the New York American.

I—STORY OF FRENCH WOMAN WHO DARED
TO FIGHT IN A TANK

If Mlle. Gouraud were not the niece of Gen. Gouraud,
whose right arm was blown off by a bursting Turkish
shell at the Dardanelles, and who was in command of
the contingent of Russian troops fighting in France, and
who succeeded Gen. Lyautey as Military Governor of
Moroccco, she probably would never have had a chance
to suffer from "tank sickness." And it's because she
came so close to proving her point—that men and women
are equal in war work as well as peace pursuits—that
Mlle. Gouraud is discouraged. For to-day she is engaged
in the—for her—exceedingly tame occupation of driving
a motor ambulance between the railroad stations and
the various hospitals in Paris.
Mlle. Gouraud has always believed in equal rights for
women. When she was sixteen years old and first interested
herself in suffrage she was hooted and laughed at.
Her first speech was delivered in the Place de la Concorde,
in Paris, near the Seine. The crowd deserted her
for the river bank to watch some boys' swimming races.

"I'll show them," said Mlle. Gouraud, and forthwith
began swimming.

Eighteen months later she was the champion woman
swimmer of France, and defeated many Belgian, Italian
and German swimmers. Once interested in sports she
speedily branched out and became a proficient amateur
boxer. She put on the gloves with Frank Moran and
Willie Lewis and Eugene Mattrot, and even Georges
Carpentier, in exhibition bouts. Then motorcycling became
popular, and after she learned the ways and habits
of a gas engine she learned to fly and was brevetted.

The day all France was plastered with mobilization
order notices Mlle. Gouraud gave up sports. She offered
herself for the army, but even the influence of her uncle,
Gen. Gouraud, was not enough to win her entree direct
into active service. Instead she obtained the post of
ambulance driver for a certain unit of aviators. But she
was never satisfied with that and finally obtained permission
to fly at the front but in a biplane machine, with a
Frenchman as mitrailleuse operator.

And there came the rub. Machine gunners clamored
for chances to go up with the men pilots, but all hung
back at going up with Mlle. Gouraud. It was unlucky,
they said, and beside they didn't want to be in on the
deal if she persisted in risking her life when there were
plenty of men for the job. Just as sailors of old were
superstitious about women on board ship, so were the
observers and machine gunners superstitious about having
a woman in their airplane. And they tried to prove
their point by citing the fact that in the burned wreckage
of the first Zeppelin brought down inside the French lines
were the feet of an incinerated body clad in filmy silk
stockings and tiny black satin slippers.
But Mlle. Gouraud stuck to aviation, hoping eventually
to persuade some machine gunner to be her team
mate and at the same time trying to find another girl
who would enter the service with her, until the French
Army created its "tank" corps. Then she lost no time in
setting to work for a transfer to that arm of the service.

The order for "V. Gouraud" to join the "tanks" was
finally put through and she went off to their base, behind
the Champagne front, between Soissons and Rheims,
thankful at last that she had won a berth in the newest
and most dangerous and most exciting and the least understood
and most interesting department of the army.

That was only a couple of weeks before Gen. Nivelle's
great offensive was unleashed in the middle of April. It
was just about the time that Lieut. Charles G. Sweeny
of San Francisco and West Point, the only commissioned
American in the French infantry, gave up his post in
charge of a squadron of "tanks" to return to the United
States and offer his services to the United States Army.

The first week of Mlle. Gouraud's training was easy
and delightful to her. Inside the steel walls of the mobile
fortress she learned to swing the little three-pounders
and to operate the cartridge belts of the machine guns
that bristled from all sides of the armored car. She
learned how to sight through the periscopes projecting
from the roof and sides to see the way and the enemy,
and all the other routine work of the "tank's" crew.

But the second week, when she began her training in a
"tank," spelled her undoing. The walls and the roof of
the "tank" are covered with leather upholstery, and every
projecting bit of mechanism and artillery in the little
chamber was also cushioned with leather, because as the
great steel fort plunged forward across shell craters and
over trenches and up and down great piles of debris—which
had once been French villages—the occupants
were tossed about inside like ashes in a sifter.

But cuts and bruises and knocks and falls didn't weaken
Mlle. Gouraud's determination to stay with the "tank"
for the great offensive soon to be begun when the engines
of destruction were to receive their baptism of fire under
the tricolor. So she rigged up a sort of harness, with a
line attached to a ring in the roof of the "tank" and with
a belt around her waist. This left her swaying like a
pendulum when the "tank" was moving but kept her
from bumping against the walls, and, what was more
important, from stumbling against other members of the
crew and interfering in the pursuit of their duties.

Then the blow descended. Mlle. Gouraud fell ill of
"tank sickness." Worse than seasickness, worse than
any form of sickness which comes as result of riding in
airplane, or on camel, or by any form of transportation
ever invented, "tank sickness" rendered her absolutely incapable
of remaining with the movable forts. So she was
drafted out, sent to hospital as "malade" and in a few
days when she was discharged, was shunted back to
Paris as "reforme."

Just one fact consoles Mlle. Gouraud to a certain extent.
And that is that she is not the only victim of "tank
sickness."

"I stuck it out three days longer than any of the rest
of the crew who were subject to it," she says.

II—STORY OF WOMAN WHO PASSED
THROUGH LINES DISGUISED AS
BELGIAN PEASANT

The thrilling adventures of Mme. Simone Puget, noted Frenchwoman,
who, under disguises as a Belgian peasant and British
"Tommy," undertook reaching her husband in the trenches at the
grave risk of losing both their lives. While they were still together
his regiment was despatched to the dreaded "first line"
and ten days later she was notified of his death under fire.

There arrived in New York from Europe a young
Frenchwoman, Mme. Simone A. Puget, dressed in deep
mourning. Watching her as she stepped ashore, a
stranger scarcely could picture her as she actually was,
not many months ago, wearing the uniform of an English
soldier and risking her life in that vague, blood-soaked
and shattered inferno of trenches, craters and
barbed-wire called "somewhere in France," to reach her
husband before he died.

Even before that Mme. Puget had achieved fame as the
daring Frenchwoman who accompanied her husband,
M. Andre Puget, the playwright and novelist, through
the Orient disguised as his brother, and as the brilliant
tennis player who captured the woman's championship
for her country four years ago. Mme. Puget also is the
author of "Les Etrangères," and other novels.

"There is so little to tell," she said quietly ... as she
folded her hands on her simple black dress. "We were
in Paris when war was declared and my husband was
called to the front.

"I volunteered as an ambulance driver and worked
almost day and night for four months carrying wounded
from a field hospital to the big emergency hospitals in
Paris.

"Then I heard that Andre had been wounded and
sent to Moulins. I went to him immediately and stayed
to nurse him until he was able to rejoin his regiment.

"After my return to Paris I received another message,
this time from a little village close to the Belgian frontier,
but across the border in Belgium. It did not say in so
many words that Andre had been wounded again, but
merely gave me the impression that he wanted to see me
once more and that I was to try to reach him.

"I quickly realized the difficulties and dangers of such
a journey. Only a short time before the military authorities
had made it a law that any soldier whose wife was
found in forbidden territory would be shot. But Andre
and I had been through many dangers together and he
knew that he could trust me. I prepared to start at once.
Armed with my letter, which simply asked me to come
without delay to the bedside of my dying grandfather,
I left Paris for Belgium attired as a Belgian peasant
girl.

"Outside Paris I was stopped. The military guards
absolutely refused to let me proceed.

"'We see too many letters like yours,' was the only
explanation offered.

"In vain did I plead and weep. Then when I had
almost given up in despair, I spied an English officer
whom Andre and I had met in India. I told him who I
was and he recalled me at once, despite my peasant garb.
I asked him to help me to reach my husband. He said
it was impossible.

"But I was desperate and when I wept and quietly
implored his aid, he said he would help me if he could.
That was the last time I saw him, but after my return
to the little hotel where I had spent the night I received
a parcel containing a soldier's uniform together with some
instructions.

"I always felt very much at home dressed as a man,
for I travelled all through Persia and other parts of the
Orient as my husband's brother.

"An artillery train with much baggage was about to
move forward and I could go with that provided I didn't
object to riding in a forage wagon for six hours. My
peasant costume I was to take with me wrapped in a
bundle. Once through the rear lines in Belgian territory
I was to look out for myself.
"We started. I rode for hours and hours, expecting
at every halt to be detected and questioned. But fortune
smiled on me and that night after we were well across
the border of Belgium I slipped down and walked forward
unchallenged. The place fairly swarmed with
soldiers, Belgian, French and British. Near a farm
house I changed back to my simple Belgian peasant garb
and prepared to resume my journey on foot as soon as it
became daylight.

"Fortunately I had not many miles to reach the farm
to which the letter had directed me. Walking all day I
reached the farm that night and there I learned to my
great joy that my husband was safe. He had not been
wounded, but his regiment was under orders to leave
within a day or so for another part of the front where
severe fighting was expected and he wanted to see me
once more, if possible, before he left. I saw him next
day. He came to the farm. Then on the morrow he
marched away with his regiment toward Arras, and ten
days later he was killed."

Mme. Andre found that it was easier to get out of the
war zone than into it and she had little difficulty in returning
to Paris. There she began to raise funds for
Red Cross work and to gather material for future reference
about the men-of-letters of America, France and
England who have given up their lives in the great war.

III—STORY OF MAID OF LOOS WHO WON
THE CROSS OF WAR

We in America find it possible to read with calm pulse and an
attitude of cold, reasoned impartiality the stories that are written
in red blood and heroic action by real participants in the
great war. Their language, like their viewpoint, seems to us
extreme, violent, embittered. Yet, inasmuch as the presence of
stern reality, which colors viewpoint and language, is the same
that inspired the valorous action itself, we submit, exactly as
it came from Paris, this article, which recounts at first hand the
desperate courage of Mlle. Moreau.

In the musty archives of the French Government she
is merely Emilienne Moreau, youngest of her sex to have
achieved mention in Gen. Joffre's Order of the Day and
the right to wear upon her breast the Cross of War. But
to thousands upon thousands of French and British soldiers,
she is the Jeanne d'Arc of Loos—whose valiant
spirit won back Loos for France.

The Official Journal has only this to say about Emilienne
Moreau:

"On Sept. 25, 1915, when British troops entered the
village of Loos, she organized a first-aid station in her
house and worked day and night to bring in the wounded,
to whom she gave all assistance, while refusing to accept
any reward. Armed with a revolver she went out and
succeeded in overcoming two German soldiers who,
hidden in a nearby house, were firing at the first-aid
station."
No mention is made in the official record of the fact
that she shot down the two Germans when their bayonets
were within a few inches of her body; and that later on
she destroyed, with hand bombs snatched from a British
grenadier's stock, three more foemen engaged in the
same despicable work.
Nor is it set forth how, when the British line was
wavering under the most terrible cyclone of shells ever
let loose upon earth, Emilienne Moreau sprang forward
with a bit of tri-colored bunting in her hand and the
glorious words of the "Marseillaise" upon her lips, and
by her fearless example averted a retreat that might
have meant disaster along the whole front. Only the
men who were in that fight can fully understand why
Sir Douglas Haig was right in christening Emilienne
Moreau the Joan of Arc of Loos.

All this happened during the last great offensive of the
allies in Artois, between Arras and La Bassee. For
almost a year before Emilienne Moreau, who is now just
seventeen, had lived in Loos under the rule of the invader.
During almost all of that time the village had been under
the allies' artillery fire. Yet neither she nor her parents
made any attempt to move to a safer place.

Their home was in Loos, and some day, they felt sure,
the Germans would be driven back. They were always
short of food. Sometimes they faced death by starvation,
as well as by bombardment.
But they remained, and Emilienne even contrived to
continue the studies by which she hoped to become a
school teacher.

Like the historic Maid of Orleans, the maid of Loos
has not only the warlike but the diplomatic genius. Despite
the dangers she faced because she was both young
and comely, she succeeded in gaining the Germans' confidence
to such an extent they entrusted to her much of
the administration of what remained of the village.

Children whose parents had been killed or taken away
as prisoners were put in her care, and she was permitted
to give them what little schooling was possible under the
conditions. She was at the same time the guardian angel
of her entire family; for her father, a hot-blooded old
veteran of 1870, frequently put them in danger of drastic
punishment by his furious denunciations of the enemy.

His chagrin so embittered him that, what with that and
scanty nourishment, he died. Then Emilienne became
the protectress and sole support of her mother and her
ten-year-old brother.

She buried her father with her own hands, in a coffin
built by her brother and herself, there being neither
undertakers nor carpenters left in Loos. And she continued
to go quietly about her many tasks, still stifling
within her the resentment against the ever-present
"Boche," until there came that glorious day when she
knew the allies' offensive had begun.

For three days the girl huddled in the cellar with her
terror-stricken mother and little brother waiting for the
end of that awful cannonade which she realized was destined
to bring the British to Loos.
Every minute of those seventy-two hours she and
every one of the handful of old men, women and children
in the village were facing death, but she told an English
officer after it was all over that to her it had been the
happiest time since the German occupation began.

As soon as Emilienne heard among the deep notes of
the guns the sharp reports of rifles she rushed out into
the street and into the midst of the first phase of the
battle. The British were driving the Germans before
them at the point of the bayonet, but there was still much
desperate activity going forward with bombs and hand
grenades, for remnants of the German main line were
ensconced strongly in various fortlets and bombproofs
scattered among the trenches. On every street of Loos
the wounded lay thickly.

Emilienne saw there was only one way she could help
them, and so very swiftly she turned the Moreau house
into a miniature hospital, and with the aid of the British
Red Cross men she tended as many wounded as she
could drag from the maelstrom of the fight.

It was when the first lull came that she detected the
firing upon her first-aid station. How she followed and
shot down the two Germans responsible for this wanton
attack is narrated in the official report. Not long afterward
she located three more in the act of perpetrating
the same outrage, and this trio she despatched with
grenades borrowed from a British sergeant.

Although it was the first time in the war that a woman
had fought with hand bombs, such was the confusion of
the battle that her brave exploit passed unremarked until
it was revealed by a special correspondent of a Paris
newspaper, the Petit Parisien, who got the story from
British soldiers. From the same source all France
learned that because a young girl had been courageous
enough to sing the "Marseillaise" amidst the din of battle
the British troops had ceased to falter in their advance,
and the village of Loos had again become part of France.

The spirit of Jeanne d'Arc, which inspired Mlle. Emilienne,
is abroad, not only in her native France, but among
the women of France's allies as well. Their heroines
emerge in the war news day by day—sometimes individually,
sometimes en masse.

There is an actual "Regiment de Jeanne"—a whole
corps of French and Belgian women commanded by
Mme. Louise Arnaud, who has obtained permission from
the War Minister to put them in uniform. The corps is
for general service at the front, one-third of the members
to be enrolled as combatants, drilled and armed like ordinary
soldiers, and all able to ride and swim.

Mme. Arnaud is the widow of an officer who was killed
in the war. Her father was a merchant ship captain of
Calais. Her new "amazon" command is to be officially
designated the "Volunteer Corps of French and Belgian
Women for National Defence."

Servian and Russian women are fighting alongside the
men in the trenches along the Balkan and other fronts
to-day. Mme. Alexandra Koudasheva, a distinguished
Russian literary lady and musician, has been appointed
Colonel of the Sixth Ural Cossack Regiment of the
Czar's army, for her valiant services in the field.

England has the London Women's Volunteer Reserve,
headed by Col. Viscountess Castlereagh, which drills
regularly at Knightsbridge Barracks and has reached a
high state of efficiency, both in manoeuvers and the
manual of arms.

Many of the English women soldiers are assisting the
authorities as guards of railway bridges and other points
of military importance in out of the way parts of the
country.

The British Government shows no disposition to make
use of the women in fighting, but many of the women
themselves are eager to fight. The "suffragettes" have
made themselves remarkable by demanding a more vigorous
prosecution of the war.

The reports generally agree that the women fight with
great bravery and some even say that they display greater
bloodthirstiness than men. This is an interesting question
which has hardly yet been settled, although psychologists
have furnished an explanation why we should expect
them to be more ferocious. They are of course more
emotional and when circumstances such as an attack on
their homes or children force them to overcome their
womanly instincts and resort to fighting, they throw away
all restraint and fight with mad, instinctive ferocity.

IV—STORY OF RUSSIAN PRIMA DONNA WHO
SAVED VIOLINIST

A terrible tragedy, this cruel war that is tearing and searing
Europe, but joy is sometimes an offspring of sorrow. In this
instance one wonders if anything less strange and stern than
an international earthquake would have delivered the beautiful
Nadina Legat into the arms of Enrico Arensen. True, Arensen
is a great singer and a distinguished musician, but he is a
plebeian, whereas Mlle. Legat (her stage name), also a brilliant
artist, is a member of a noble Russian family, the favorite
daughter of General Schuvatoff, who is at present leading an
army on the Roumanian frontier. Russian aristocrats, even if
they have so far descended from their pedestals as to sing for
the public, do not lightly relinquish their hereditary traditions,
or if they listen to the pleadings of a lowly lover, a haughty
parent intervenes and nips the tender affair in the bud. In this
instance, however, it was Mars, and not Cupid, who broke the
bars.

When you sit through a performance of grand opera—almost
any one of those combinations of drama and
music which retain their hold upon the public—you cannot
fail to be impressed by the tragic misfortunes which
pursue the hero and heroine. The wise composers of
grand opera see to it that the principal tenor and the
prima donna have troubles calculated to call forth their
highest powers of vocal expression. To find these
strange and inspiring situations they have searched the
dramatic writings of the master-poets of all nations and
periods.

Real life, however, occasionally moves a living hero
and a living heroine in ways which the master-poets of
grand opera could not foresee. By a strange coincidence
that has happened to a principal tenor and a prima donna
who are impersonating together before grand opera audiences
classic heroes and heroines whose history and troubles
were much less thrilling than their own.
Its coloratura soprano, formerly of the Russian Imperial
Opera, is Mme. Nadina Legat, the much beset Gilda
in "Rigoletto"—drawn from Victor Hugo's "Le Roi
S'Amuse"; the heroine of "La Traviata," otherwise the
consumptive Magdalene, Camille, created by the younger
Dumas; the tragically unfortunate Lucia, for whom
Donizetti went to Walter Scott's "Bride of Lammermoor."

The beginning of the story is essential because of its
bearing on the "big situation." Legat and Arensen enjoyed
their first great opera triumph together at the famous
La Scala, in Milan, she was Gilda and he the
Duke in "Rigoletto." Though both are of Russian birth,this was their first meeting. As La Scala is recognized
throughout Europe as the final "acid test" of an opera
singer's qualities, the status which both had attained
separately in their own country was of comparatively
small consequence. With nerves tense to the breaking
point, each concentrated on the task of winning that
cultivated, critical Milan audience.

At rehearsals their quarrels were rather fiercer than
is usual between the principal tenor and the prima donna.

"At that time I could hardly endure him," says Mme.
Legat. "We quarrelled terribly. He seemed so unreasonably
insistent on certain details at the rehearsals that
I considered him unbearable, insupportable."

But Mme. Legat confesses that this feeling did not survive
the triumph which they won together. Shortly afterward,
when he departed to fill an engagement with the
Imperial Opera in Berlin and she was summoned back to
Russia, they parted as friends. If they had developed
a stronger feeling for each other, neither was aware
of it.

They went about their separate opera affairs. The
beginning of the European war found Arensen still an
opera favorite in Berlin and Vienna. Mme. Legat was
spending the Summer at Nice, after two years of distinguished
success in Russia, upon which the Czar himself
placed the imperial stamp. She wished to return at
once to Petrograd, but hearing from her mother that the
latter would come to her, she remained at Nice until the
Russian Hospital at Monte Carlo was founded, when
both became nurses there.

And, month after month, while the celebrated opera
soprano was nursing wounded soldiers, not knowing nor
caring about anything else, Arensen, the tenor with whom
she had quarrelled so fiercely on the stage of La Scala,
was virtually a prisoner of war in Germany. For ten[278]
days after the beginning of hostilities he continued his
successful appearances in Berlin—and then, without
warning, the blow fell.

Some said that rival singers, native Germans, directed
suspicion against him, as though inquiring:
"Russia is our enemy. What is this Russian doing
here?"

One night German soldiers arrested him at the opera
house and he was interned as an enemy alien. He appealed
to the Government for release, pointing out that
he was above the fighting age—as he then was, which
was before the Russian army age limit was raised—and
Germany would lose nothing by letting him go home.
The suggestion fell upon deaf ears. His subsequent
efforts to obtain his release the tenor himself relates:

"I was a prisoner for twenty-four hours in the Hausvogter
Gefangniss, which is the delightful name the Berlinese
give to the institution where they intern aliens.
I sent a letter to the Kaiser himself, before whom I have
many times sung, asking my release.

"It was not long before I received an answer to the
letter, granting my request—a communication from the
Kaiser. Of course, there were conditions. I was to go
to America as soon as it was practicable for me to do so,
anyhow, but that was not sufficient guarantee for the
meticulous German war office.

"No, indeed. It was really a very solemn procedure.
I had to sign an oath in German and Russian that I
would never take up arms in any way against Germany
or her allies. My word, once given, was sufficient. The
German military commander in charge of the prison
camp gave me my freedom, and I received a passport
that permitted me to leave the country. On my last night
in Germany some German officers opened champagne in
my honor.

"I went through Switzerland to Italy, where I remained
for some time—in fact, during the greater part of the
long conflict that finally broke down the barriers of neutrality
and led to Italy's enlistment in the war against
her former allies. Eventually I crossed the Piedmont to
the border town of Mentone, where I contemplated entering
France.

"Alas! Here misfortune began anew. I had barely
entered the town when I was halted by a French frontier
guard. From that time on I was treated pretty harshly.

"The French Government put me under strict surveillance.
I was forced to report twice a day at the town
police headquarters, and was really under suspicion at all
times. The reason was, of course, that my associations
with so many Berlin people were known—the French
were aware that I had remained in the German capital
after war broke out, and did not purpose to take any
chances with me.
"I appealed to the Russian Ambassador in Paris for
help, but was turned down pretty coldly. 'I can't do anything
for you,' was the gist of his reply to my request,
'because I know that you have a lot of German friends.'

"The outlook was, then, that I should have to remain
practically a prisoner until the war was over. It was a
pretty black future. At almost any time, something might
happen, I suppose, that would give the French reason to
think that they had been too lenient in merely keeping
me under surveillance. I might have been interned and
placed in a real prison camp.

"But Providence intervened. One day last Spring,
just after the first Russian troops had come to France,
I met a Russian soldier while he was off duty and had
the opportunity I longed for to talk with someone who
used my native tongue. When he learned my identity,
he was much interested, and he gave me some news that
proved a godsend.

"'You are Arensen, the tenor!' he said. 'How remarkable!
Mme. Legat, of the Imperial Opera at
Petrograd, is only a short distance from this place—in
the Russian hospital at Monte Carlo!'
"Imagine how the news delighted me! Here, at last,
was a friend on whom I could count. I thanked the
man profusely for the information he had given. Then
I went to my lodgings and wrote an appeal to my country-woman."

The exact wording of that appeal has not been submitted
for publication. Its effect upon Mme. Legat was
electrical. For the first time in nearly two years she became
oblivious to her immediate surroundings—shattered
and bleeding war heroes and the gruesome accessories
of a military hospital. In all those months she had
hardly thought of the quarrelsome tenor who had shared
her triumph at La Scala. Now, suddenly, he occupied
her whole mental vision—the central innocent victim of
an impending tragedy.

So intense was that vision that it overwhelmed her
with the vividness of reality. She saw French soldiers
dragging Arensen, her countryman, from his prison cell.
She saw them place him with his back against a wall.
She saw them blindfold him—and she could hear the
tramp, tramp of the firing squad. Those grim human
instruments of martial law! They turn face to face with
the doomed prisoner—their musket butts ring upon the
concrete pavement of the prison yard....
Suddenly another figure, that of a woman, rushes upon
the scene and falls upon her knees before the commandant
of the firing squad.

Mme. Legat recognized this figure as herself—and with
the terrifying vision constantly before her eyes she rushed
off to Paris to make her personal appeal to the Russian
Ambassador.
In the quiet, severe, official atmosphere of the Russian
Embassy Mme. Legat calmed herself, collected her wits
and prepared to measure them with those of M. Isowsky,
her country's chief representative at the French capital.
The Russian Ambassador paid to her the homage
due to a celebrated singer—and then resumed his frigid
official aspect. At her mention of Arensen he froze.
"But, Monsieur Arensen is a fellow Russian—our
countryman."

"Madame," said the Ambassador, curtly, "I am by no
means positive that Arensen is a loyal Russian. For two
years he has lived in Germany and Austria—our two
most powerful enemies. He acquired hosts of German
friends. He comes to France plastered over with German
credentials. He bears the Kaiser's own signed permit to
leave Germany. He—"

"Do you believe that I am a loyal Russian?" demanded
Mme. Legat.

The Russian Ambassador smiled graciously. Ah, he
had no doubt of Madame's loyalty.
That awful vision still obsessed her. She realized that
there was nothing she would not do to save Arensen. She
remembered that she was the daughter of a general in the
Imperial Russian army. She drew herself up to her full
height and looked the Russian Ambassador straight in the
eyes. She said:
"I will vouch for M. Arensen. I will guarantee that
he is a loyal Russian, and will remain so."

"Um——," pondered M. Isowsky. "Well, well—um—how
can you be sure? How can you assure me?"

Right then and there Mme. Legat felt a sudden emotion,
and knew what she was going to do—what she
wanted to do—to dispel that tragic vision.

"I'll give you the assurance of a wife," she said. "I'll
marry him!"

The Russian Ambassador was baffled—admitted it.
He signed the papers that gave Arensen his freedom as a
loyal Russian. The heroine herself relates the sequel:

"Like Tosca in the opera, I sped to him bearing freedom.
I didn't have to tell him the whole story—not then.
We found that our old acquaintance, begun at La Scala,
had blossomed into love during our separation. So he
did the proposing. We were married just an hour before
the Lafayette sailed, bringing us to the United
States."

Smiles & Good Fortune,Teresa************************************It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915

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Hello and Welcome

I love women's history, but even more, I love women's historical fiction. Why? A favorite quote of mine about history in general and Women's History in particular, from perhaps the world's most famous Woman Author, sums it all up perfectly.

"I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all—it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs— the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books."Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen.

Thank you for visiting,Teresa Thomas BohannonAuthor of A Very Merry ChaseAnd Shadows In A Timeless MythAvailable for Kindle, Nook & now...also in Large Print Paperback.PS: The links on this page that lead to pages (usually on Amazon) where purchases can be made, are affiliate links which help to support this blog.

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About Me

Teresa Thomas Bohannon is a published author, web designer, hosting & domain provider & (occasional) internet marketing consultant. Teresa founded Spun Silk Web Design in December of 1995 as one of the first free standing female owned web design firms in the country.
As of late, Teresa has returned to her roots, utilizing the exciting new world of online publishing to present a backlog of original novels and short stories to the world--beginning with A Very Merry Chase--a Regency romance novel which she originally wrote some 35 years ago. :) In late 2011 she published Shadows In A Timeless Myth a Paranormal Historical Fantasy/Romance/Horror Novel.
Teresa holds an MA in history--with a haphazardly obtained--concentration in women's studies. In addition, she is the Director of Human Resources for a non-profit agency.
Teresa's personal cause is revitalizing literacy by reading "with" children.